Symbiosis
by misscam
Summary: One can survive without the other, but they still come together because sometimes, sometimes life is the two. [GSR. Faint hints of CWR.]


Symbiosis  
by Camilla Sandman

Author's Note: Set some time after season five. Very minor reference to Grave Danger.

Symbiosis, noun. 1. _Biology._ A close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that may, but does not necessarily, benefit each member. 2. A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

II

A fantasy.

Grissom's lips against the pulse in her neck, her heartbeats echoing across his skin, seeping in, filling him. His hand laced in her hair, leaving epithelials, faint traces of his touch. His voice drifting into her ear, the words of seduction, declaration, admission. For her, for Sara. His body pressing against hers, as if one, as if two. Grissom and Sara, two heartbeats overlapping.

A fantasy.

She lets it go with the dream and opens her eyes to her empty apartment, the sunlight pale and without heat. Another morning in Las Vegas, another morning of her life. She is cold as she stands up, her naked feet given winter's touch by the floor. The shower is hot as she turns it on, but it warms only her skin and not her bones. Still, she closes her eyes to the water, feeling it touch all of her, cleaning her of all except what rests within. She doesn't know if anything can clean that, not even fantasies.

Memories know nothing but memory, blood nothing but dying, she knows. Without the body, blood dies. Without blood, the body dies. Need and life and death. Almost a symbiosis.

The water turns cold and she gets out, leaving damp footprints to fade away in the silent air.

II

Work is as it always is, always has been. The team has reunited by Ecklie's order and it feels warmer, almost as a lair to hibernate in while winter freezes life, even if Catherine sometimes chillingly reminds Grissom that his request demoted her. But even so Catherine seems glad for it, smiling her inappropriate smiles at Warrick and letting him touch her with warm hands. Sara doesn't need the explaining words to see the symbiosis of the two and she feels envy. Not for what Catherine has, but what Sara doesn't have.

Grissom looks at her, but even his gaze cannot give her hope anymore. She has given up on hope. Problem is, she has not given up the fantasy.

He gives her a case with Nick, and she lets his gaze devour her while she walks away, leaving the lair to walk in winter's Las Vegas.

She only hopes the cold of humanity's deeds will not be the death of her too.

II

Nick is quieter these days. His smiles are still easy and bright, but they come less often. She knows what he remembers and blames him not. Some things are not forgotten. Some echoes never die.

The case seems simple enough at first glance. A dead wife named Cheryl, a husband named Carl inconveniently without alibi, and many proclaimed motives voiced by the neighbours. But even so, Sara feels something wrong, almost as if she has learned to know guilt and there is none in the husband. Only despair and fear and grief, skin pale and tear-streaked as he sits in his house, cops swarming him like flies to a corpse.

She looks over the crime scene even more closely, and the hair found is not the husband's. It is the brother's, Jason's, and she knows she was right.

II

Nick and Brass go with her to the brother, but the house is empty and the brother has fled his lair. She searches it, touching the traces of another's life through her gloves, slowly making up the shape of it. Parents died young, two siblings with only each other in the world. Two siblings clinging to each other until one sibling let go and married another.

One sibling dying.

She knows she will find guilt in the brother already.

Outside, the wind howls and claws at all, the breath of winter like a storm.

II

She tells Grissom of their case and he nods to the evidence and compliments both her and Nick on a job well done. She tries not to feel the compliment, but it still touches her bones. Grissom could always reach within her, even with words, even without touch. He needs not hold her for her to feel his grip.

"I miss you," he says suddenly, looking at his desk.

"I'm here."

"No. You're…" He searches for the word, looking at her earnestly, as if he has never pushed her away, never formed the landscape she is now in.

"Hibernating," she finishes for him and he nods once, slowly.

They sit in the shadows of his office for a while, silent as Warrick and Catherine's laughter echo down the halls.

II

They finally find the brother, the killer of Cheryl. Cold and grieving, he has found another lair and Brass has found it. A hunter knowing the tricks of his prey, stalking until the time is right.

Perhaps the time is wrong.

The brother is with a neighbour and hears the cops busting into his house, and like a prey hearing the trap about to close in, he charges. Not with claws or teeth, but the gun can tear flesh too. Sara sees him come, sees the danger cine at Brass and Nick and she fires, the bullet and the heartbeat roaring together.

Jason doesn't die at once, and she watches the light of life fading from him as he struggles to hold on, as Brass barks for an ambulance and Nick only looks sick.

"She was a parasite on me and still I couldn't live without her! I didn't mean to, didn't mean to… I loved her…"

He cries pitifully, hopelessly, humanly and his tears mingle with blood, falling to the earth.

'Symbiosis,' she thinks and watches him die.

Afterwards, she sits in the silence, feeling winter's kiss upon her, her bones now of ice.

II

She takes a week off as ordered, sees the shrink as ordered, faces the questions as ordered. The investigation lands no blame on her, and she is commended for probably saving lives. Brass calls and Nick calls, but she lets the machine answer, not wanting to hear the gratitude in their voice. It will only make it worse.

She has killed for her family, as her mother did. She is her mother for a while, feeling as a killer.

She takes long walks, going nowhere, letting the wind dry her tears. She thinks of Jason, of Cheryl, of her own brother, her own family, her own symbiosis. She thinks of winter and longs for spring, longs for life and sun and fantasy.

As she walks home the last day of the week, she sees him in the faint morning mist. He stands on the curb and waits for her, hands in his pocket, wind tearing at his clothes. She walks towards him, even as each step is on a road of thorns and barbed wire.

"Sara," he says and she leans against him, darkness and blood and guilt seeping from her wounds. "Sara."

He wraps his scarf around her while they stand there in what's not quite a lover's embrace, not quite just a friend's supporting hug. She smells his scent, feels the wool of the scarf wrap her heartbeat away from the winter and for a fleeting moment, she fantasises this is her lair and she can sleep here until spring.

II

He doesn't order her to take another week off, simply asks her and when she agrees, he takes it off too. He doesn't ask her if she wants this, but she forgives him anyway, because sometimes he forgets they are two and not one. Though he often knows what she wants, it is polite to ask, but Grissom is more earnest than he is polite.

He walks with her, sometimes in silence, sometimes in talk. He takes her to dinner, to lunch, to breakfast, as if determined to fatten her up against the cold days ahead. He tries to remember she is vegetarian when suggesting where they eat, and his presence feels as a fire in her life, trying to burn everything else.

Sometimes, she rages at him when the wounds feel too painful and he weathers it, encouraging it, draining her wounds and hurts until she feels only empty and tired.

Only then does he kiss her, perhaps so she can know it is not out of pity. At least she thinks that must be it, his lips burning against hers, spring's promise in a kiss.

She knows she is going to live now.

II

One night in her lair, her body against his, his head resting on her shoulder, his fingers tracing her skin. The fantasy and not the fantasy, for fantasy is perfection and humans can never give that. But what they give is real and so is this.

"Why did you take so long?" she asks, hearing the wind distantly tap at her window, but outside now and she need not let it in unless she wants.

His hands pause on her skin, lingering just above her heart. She feels his hesitation, knows she will still have to fight to reach fully into him, but at least now feeling she has a path in.

"Fear," he says, the word ringing of truth. "If I give all to you and you leave me, nothing remains. Perhaps I finally believe you might stay with me."

He fears and she bleeds, but still they have sought together, still they have not let the other go. She knows now that they attached themselves to each other a long time ago and she knows not how to break free.

She's not sure she even wants to know anymore."Don't be afraid," she whispers to Grissom, kissing his neck, feeling his pulse on her lips. "I'm not leaving."

Not the fantasy, no, but it is life and she rests in it, listening to Grissom sleep. She feels the winter stretching on in the night, both waiting for its end to become another's start, winter to spring, night to day, the patterns of the Earth that brings change, brings life, brings death.

She thinks of Jason briefly, his death, his life, his symbiosis. Perhaps his need not be hers. Perhaps hers can give both benefit, make both better at living. Symbiosis. One can survive without the other, but they still come together because sometimes, sometimes life is the two.

And she sleeps, her breath mingling with Grissom's, being two, being one.


End file.
